Adelaide Procter
Adelaide Anne Procter (30 October 1825 - 2 February 1864) was an English poet and philanthropist. Life Overview Procter was the eldest daughter of Bryan W.Procter. Many of her poems were 1st published in Household Words and All the Year Round, and afterwards collected under the title of Legends and Lyrics (1858), of which many editions appeared. In 1851 Miss Procter became a Roman Catholic. She took much interest in social questions affecting women. She wrote the well-known songs, "Cleansing Fires" and "The Lost Chord," and among her many hymns are, "I do not ask, O Lord, that Life may be," and "My God, I thank Thee who hast made."John William Cousin, "Procter, Adelaide Ann," A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London: Dent / New York: Dutton, 1910, 309. Wikisource, Web, Feb. 21, 2018. Procter was the favourite poet of Queen Victoria. Her poetry went through numerous editions in the 19th century; Coventry Patmore called her the most popular poet of the day, after Alfred, Lord Tennyson. She worked on behalf of a number of causes, most prominently on behalf of unemployed women and the homeless, and was actively involved with feminist groups and journals. Procter never married, and some of her poetry has prompted speculation that she was a lesbian.Gregory (1998), 25. She suffered from ill health, possibly due to her charity work, and died of tuberculosis at the age of 38. Her poems were set to music and made into hymns, and were published in the United States and Germany as well as in England. Youth Procter was born at 25 Bedford Square in the Bloomsbury district of London, on 30 October 1825 to poet Bryan Waller Procter and his wife Anne (Skepper).Gregory (2004). The family had strong literary ties: novelist Elizabeth Gaskell enjoyed her visits to the Procter household,Gregory (1998), 5. and Procter's father was friends with poet Leigh Hunt, essayist Charles Lamb, and novelist Charles Dickens,O'Gorman (2004), 314. as well as being acquainted with poet William WordsworthBlair (2004), 128. and critic William Hazlitt.Hickok and Woodall (1998), 519. Family friend Bessie Rayner Belloc wrote in 1895 that "everybody of any literary pretension whatever seemed to flow in and out of the house. The Kembles, the Macreadys, the Rossettis, the Dickens sic, the Thackerays, never seemed to be exactly visitors, but to belong to the place."Quoted in Gregory (1999), 5. Author and actress Fanny Kemble wrote that young Procter "looks like a poet's child, and a poet ... with a preter-naturally sic thoughtful, mournful expression for such a little child". Dickens spoke highly of Procter's quick intelligence. By his account, the young Procter mastered without difficulty the subjects to which she turned her attention: :When she was quite a young child, she learnt with facility several of the problems of Euclid. As she grew older, she acquired the French, Italian, and German languages ... piano-forte ... and drawing. But, as soon as she had completely vanquished the difficulties of any one branch of study, it was her way to lose interest in it, and pass to another.Dickens (1866), 3. Procter showed a love of poetry from an early age, carrying with her while still a young child a "tiny album ... into which her favourite passages were copied for her by her mother's hand before she herself could write ... as another little girl might have carried a doll".Dickens (1866), 3. A voracious reader, Procter was largely self-taught; she did, however, study at Queen's College in Harley Street in 1850. The college had been founded two years earlier in 1848 by Frederick Maurice, a Christian Socialist; the faculty included novelist Charles Kingsley, composer John Hullah, and writer Henry Morley.Gregory (1998), 13. Literary career Procter published her 1st poem while still a teenager; the poem, "Ministering Angels", appeared in Heath's Book of Beauty in 1843. In 1853 she submitted work to Dickens's Household Words under the name "Mary Berwick", wishing that her work be judged on its own merits rather than in relation to Dickens's friendship with her father;Dickens (1866), 2. Dickens did not learn "Berwick's" identity till the following year.Dickens (1866), 1. The poem's publication began Proctor's long association with Dickens's periodicals; in all, Procter published 73 poems in Household Words and 7 poems in All the Year Round, most of which were collected into her first 2 volumes of poetry, both entitled Legends and Lyrics. She was also published in Good Words and Cornhill. As well as writing poetry, Procter was the editor of the journal Victoria Regia, which became the showpiece of the Victoria Press, "an explicitly feminist publishing venture".Chapman (2003), 31. In 1851,Bessie Rayner Parkes Belloc gives the date as 1849; Dickens as 1851 in his "Introduction" to the 1866 edition of Legends and Lyrics. The introduction was read and approved by Procter's mother; Gill Gregory therefore argues that Dickens's date is the correct one (Gregory 1998, 8). Procter converted to Roman Catholicism. Following her conversion, Procter became extremely active in several charitable and feminist causes. She became a member of the Langham Place Group, which set out to improve conditions for women, and was friends with feminists Bessie Rayner Parkes (later Bessie Rayner Belloc) and Barbara Leigh Smith, later Barbara Bodichon. Procter helped found the English Women's Journal in 1858 and, in 1859, the Society for the Promotion of the Employment of Women, both of which focused on expanding women's economic and employment opportunities. Though on paper merely one member among many, fellow-member Jessie Boucherett considered Proctor to be the "animating spirit" of the Society.Quoted in Gregory (1998), 27. Her third volume of poetry, A Chaplet of Verses (1861), was published for the benefit of a Catholic Night Refuge for Women and Children that had been founded in 1860 at Providence Row in east London.Gregory (1998), 3. Procter became engaged in 1858, according to a letter that her friend William Makepeace Thackeray wrote to his daughters that year. However, the identity of Procter's fiancé remains unknown, and the proposed marriage never took place.Gregory (1998), 21. According to her German biographer Ferdinand Janku, the engagement seems to have lasted several years before being broken off by Procter's fiancé.Quoted in Gregory (1998), 24. Critic Gill Gregory suggests that Procter may have been a lesbian and in love with Matilda Hays, a fellow member of the Society for the Promotion of the Employment of Women; other critics have called Procter's relationship with Hays "emotionally intense."Hoeckley (2007), 123. Procter's first volume of poetry, Legends and Lyrics (1858) was dedicated to Hays and that same year Procter wrote a poem titled "To M.M.H."Later published in Legends and Lyrics as "A Retrospect". in which Procter "expresses love for Hays ... was a novelist and translator of George Sand and a controversial figure ... who dressed in men's clothes and had lived with the sculptor Harriet Hosmer in Rome earlier in the 1850s." While several men showed interest in her, Procter never married.Gregory (1998), 24. Death Procter fell ill in 1862; Dickens and others have suggested that her illness was due to her extensive charity work, which "appears to have unduly taxed her strength".Dickens (1866), 9; Lennox (1911). An attempt to improve her health by taking a cure at Malvern failed. On 3 February 1864, Procter died of tuberculosis, having been bed-ridden for close to a year.Gregory (1998), 1. Her death was described in the press as a "national calamity".Quoted in Gray (1999), 682. Procter was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery. Writing Procter's poetry was strongly influenced by her religious beliefs and charity work; homelessness, poverty, and fallen women are frequent themes. Procter's prefaces to her volumes of poetry stress the misery of the conditions under which the poor lived, as do poems such as "The Homeless Poor": In that very street, at that same hour, In the bitter air and drifting sleet, Crouching in a doorway was a mother, With her children shuddering at her feet. She was silent – who would hear her pleading? Men and beasts were housed – but she must stay Houseless in the great and pitiless city, Till the dawning of the winter day. (51–58)Quoted in Gregory (1998), 12. Procter's Catholicism also influenced her choice of images and symbols;Hoeckley (2007), 127. Procter often uses references to the Virgin Mary, for example, to "introduce secular and Protestant readers to the possibility that a heavenly order critiques Victorian gender ideology's power structure." Procter wrote a number of poems about war (the majority of poems published on this topic in Household Words were by ProcterMarkovits (2005), 472.), although she rarely deals directly with the topic, preferring to leave war "in the background, something to be inferred rather than stated."Markovits (2005), 473. Generally, these poems portray conflict as something "that might unite a nation that had been divided by class distinctions." According to critic Gill Gregory, Procter "does not overtly ponder the vexed question of the poet, particularly the woman poet and her accession to fame",Gregory (1998), 56. unlike many other women poets of the time, such as Felicia Hemans and Letitia Elizabeth Landon. Procter is instead concerned primarily with the working classes, particularly working-class women, and with "emotions of women antagonists which have not fully found expression".Gregory (1998), 57. Procter's work often embodies a Victorian aesthetic of sentimentality,Mason (2006), 82, 86. but, according to Francis O'Gorman, does so with "peculiar strength"; Procter employs emotional affect without simplification, holding "emotional energy tension ... against complications and nuances." Procter's language, however, is simple; she expressed to a friend a "morbid terror of being misunderstood and misinterpreted",Quoted in Gregory (1998), 66. and her poetry is therefore marked by "simplicity, directness, and clarity of expression".Gregory (1998), 66. Critical reputation Procter was "fabulously popular"Gray (1999), 682. in the mid-19th century; she was Queen Victoria's favourite poet, and Coventry Patmore stated that the demand for her work was greater than that for any other poet, excepting Tennyson. Readers valued Procter's poems for their plainness of expression,Belloc (1895), 173. although they were considered "not so very original in thought; merit is that they are indeed the utterances 'of a believing heart', pouring out its fulness."Taylor (1868), 163. Procter herself expressed little ambition about her work: her friend Bessie Raynor Belloc thought that Procter was pained that her reputation as a poet had outstripped her father's, and quoted Procter as saying that "Papa is a poet. I only write verses."Belloc (1895), 170. Procter's popularity continued after her death; the 1st volume of Legends and Lyrics went through 19 editions, and the 2nd through 14 editions, by 1891. Her work was also published in the United States and translated into German. By the early 20th century, however, Procter's reputation had fallen so far that a textbook could mention her poems only to pronounce them "stupid, trivial and not worthy of the subject".Understanding Poetry, 1938, quoted in Psomiades (2000), 37. Critics such as Cheri Larsen Hoeckley, Kathleen Hickok, and Natalie Joy Woodall argue that the demise of Procter's reputation is due at least in part to the way Charles Dickens characterized her as a "model middle-class domestic angel"Hoeckley (2007), 125. and a "fragile and modest saint"Hickok and Woodall (1998), 520. rather than as an "active feminist and strong poet." Emma Mason, however, argues that although Dicken's portrayal of Procter "extinguished modern interest" in her, it also "has helped rescue Procter from the kind of endless conjecture about her private life that has confused studies of women like Letitia Landon."Mason (2006), 81. Those who have, however, argue that Procter's work is significant, in part for what it reveals about how Victorian women expressed otherwise repressed feelings. The few critics who have examined Procter's poetry generally find it important for the way that Procter overtly expresses conventional sentiments while covertly undermining them. According to Isobel Armstrong, Procter's poetry, like that of many 19th-century women poets, employs conventional ideas and modes of expression without necessarily espousing them in entirety.Armstrong (1996), 251, 265. Francis O'Gorman cites "A Legend of Provence" as an example of a poem with this kind of "double relationship with the structures of gender politics it seems to affirm."O'Gorman (2004), 320. Other critics since Armstrong agree that Procter's poetry, while ladylike on the surface, shows signs of repressed emotions and desires.Hoeckley (2007), 130; Mason (2006), 88. Kirstie Blair states that the suppression of emotion in Procter's work makes the narrative poems all the more powerful,Blair (2004), 135. and Gill Gregory argues that Procter's poetry often explores female sexuality in an unconventional way, while as often voicing anxiety about sexual desires.Gregory (1996), 89. However, Elizabeth Gray criticizes the fact that the few discussions of Procter's poetry that do exist focus primarily on gender, arguing that the "range and formal inventiveness of this illuminatingly representative Victorian poet have remained largely unexplored." Recognition Many of her poems were made into hymns,Lennox (1911). or otherwise set to music. Among these was "The Lost Chord", which Arthur Sullivan set to music in 1877 – this song was the most commercially successful of the 1870's and 1880's in both Britain and the United States.Scott (2004). Publications Poetry * Legends and Lyrics. London: Bell & Daldy, 1858 **(with introduction by Charles Dickens). London: Bell & Daldy, 1866. * Legends and Lyrics: Second series. 1861 * The Poems of Adelaide A. Procter (introduction by Charles Dickens). New York: Hurst, 1858. * A Chaplet of Verses. London: Longman, Green, Longman, & Roberts, 1862. *''The Complete Poetical Works of Adelaide Anne Procter''. Boston: Houghton & Mifflin, 1899. *''Legends and Lyrics, and other poems''. London: J.M. Dent / New York: E.P. Dutton, 1906. *''Legends and Lyrics, together with A chaplet of verses''. London & Edinburgh: Humphrey Milford / Oxford University Press, 1914. Fiction * A House to Let (co-written with Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell and Wilkie Collins). London: Chapman & Hall, 1903.[http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2324/2324-h/2324-h.htm A House to Let] (London: Chapman & Hall, 1903). Project Gutenberg, Web, Oct. 27, 2013. * "The Haunted House," a short story co-written with Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Wilkie Collins, George Sala and Hesba Stretton). Edited *''The Victoria Regia: A volume of original contributions in poetry and prose''. London: Emily Faithful, 1861. Collected editions *''The Complete Works of Adelaide A. Procter'' (introduction by Charles Dickens). London: George Bell, 1909. Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.Search results = au:Adelaide Procter, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, Oct. 27, 2013. See also *List of British poets *List of English-language hymnists *List of English-language songwriters References * Armstrong, Isobel. "A Music of Thine Own: Women's Poetry — An Expressive Tradition". In Victorian Women Poets: A Critical Reader. Ed. Angela Leighton. New Jersey: Blackwell Publishers, 1996. ISBN 0-631-19757-5. * Belloc, Bessie Rayner. In a Walled Garden. New York: Macmillan and Company, 1895. No ISBN. * Blair, Kirstie. John Keble in Context. London and New York: Anthem Press, 2004. ISBN 1-84331-147-X. * Chapman, Alison. Victorian Women Poets. Woodbridge, Suffolk, England: D. S. Brewer, 2003. ISBN 0-85991-787-8. * Dickens, Charles. Introduction. Legends and Lyrics Together with a Chaplet of Verses. Reprint, 1914. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1866. No ISBN. * Gray, F. Elizabeth. "Review of The Life and Work of Adelaide Procter: Poetry, Feminism and Fathers". Victorian Studies 42 (1999): 682–684. Accessed through Project Muse on 7 May 2009. * Gregory, Gill. "Adelaide Procter's 'A Legend of Provence': The Struggle for a Place". In Victorian Women Poets: A Critical Reader. Ed. Angela Leighton. New Jersey: Blackwell Publishers, 1996. ISBN 0-631-19757-5. * Gregory, Gill. The Life and Work of Adelaide Procter: Poetry, Feminism and Fathers. Aldershot, Hants., England: Ashgate, 1998. ISBN 1-84014-670-2. * Gregory, Gill. "Procter, Adelaide Anne (1825–1864)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (subscription only). September 2004. Accessed 7 May 2009. * Hickok, Kathleen, and Natalie Joy Woodall. "Adelaide Anne Procter." In An Encyclopedia of British Women Writers. Revised edition. Edited by Paul Schlueter and June Schlueter. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1998. * Hoeckley, Cheri Larsen. "'Must Her Own Words Do All?': Domesticity, Catholicism, and Activism in Adelaide Anne Procter's Poems." In The Catholic Church and Unruly Women Writers: Critical Essays. Edited by Jeana DelRosso, Leigh Eicke, and Ana Kothe. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. * Accessed 7 May 2009. * Markovits, Stefanie. "North and South, East and West: Elizabeth Gaskell, the Crimean War, and the Condition of England." Nineteenth-Century Literature 59 (March 2005): 463–493. Accessed through JSTOR (subscription only) on 24 September 2009. * Mason, Emma. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. Devon: Northhcote House Publishers, 2006. * O'Gorman, Francis. Victorian Poetry: An annotated anthology. New Jersey: Wiley-Blackwell, 2004. ISBN 0-631-23436-5. * Psomiades, Kathy Alexis. "'The Lady of Shalott' and the Critical Fortunes of Victorian Poetry". In The Cambridge Companion to Victorian Poetry. Edited by Joseph Bristow. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. ISBN 0-521-64680-4. * Scott, Derek B. "The Musical Soirée: Rational Amusement in the Home". The Victorian Web. 2004. Accessed 27 August 2009. * Taylor, Emily. Memories of some contemporary poets, with selections from their writings. London: Longmans, Green, and Company, 1868. No ISBN. Notes External links ;Poems *Procter, Adelaide (1825-1864) ("A Lost Chord") at Representative Poetry Online *Procter in A Victorian Anthology, 1837-1895: "A Woman's Question," "A Doubting Heart," "The Requital," "Per Pacem ad Lucem" *Adelaide Procter profile & 7 poems at My Poetic Side *Adelaide Anne Procter at PoemHunter (9 poems) *Adelaide Anne Procter at Poetry Nook (174 poems) ;Books * ;Audio / video *Adelaide Procter poems at YouTube ;About *Adelaide Anne Procter in the Catholic Encyclopedia. *Adelaide A. Procter at Collective Biographies of Women. *Adelaide Anne Procter at Gerald-Massey.org Category:1825 births Category:1864 deaths Category:Catholic poets Category:Converts to Roman Catholicism Category:English Catholic poets Category:English philanthropists Category:English poets Category:English Roman Catholics Category:English women writers Category:People associated with Gilbert and Sullivan Category:People from Bloomsbury Category:Roman Catholic writers Category:Women poets Category:19th-century poets Category:19th-century women writers Category:English-language poets Category:Poets